The Elegance of Simplicity

(WARNING: No, I haven't written this book. Yes, I might.)

The cover is the first page of your book. All authors know that, and they all want a title that will grab attention, hold it, intrigue- grasp the reader so hard she can't let go. They want the cover to somehow convey to the reader every emotion the author feels about her story. And sometimes they mis-understand that the cover should NOT tell the story.

Think about it. If you look at a cover and you quickly spin in your mind how the story will go, where it's set, how the characters will feel and change, then what will you do next? You'll put it down. You're satisfied. A picture is worth a thousand words, they say, and maybe in the case of a book cover, a hundred thousand words. And if your cover tells your whole story, the reader's done. No, a cover should be the first page, not the whole thing.

But it's hard. Authors who self-publish in digital form are really vulnerable to this "perfect cover" flaw. Artists, too, or I, at least, keep wanting to crowd in yet one more little element to make the cover so perfect. And the reality is, simplicity can be a far better seller. Simplicity can be incredibly elegant. Or stark. Or simply simple. The way ebook covers are viewed, in long, scrolling lists of small thumbnail images, or on pages crammed with other covers, means  covers have a hard time being the one cover the reader glimpses in a rapid scroll downward. But simple, in its many forms, usually does the job most authors crave. It stops the reader in her fast-paced scrolling tracks. 

I did this cover design for one reason. To demonstrate how compelling just a face can be. I've hinted that the story is medieval. But I could have put in a verbal hint that it was contemporary, and truly her heavily made up face suggests that. But that's a side issue because there is no story. The very simplicity, the stark sharpness of her makeup and the flowing folds of the dark purple scarf (chiffon, I can tell in close-up) meld into the background. If anything is fanciful, it's the lettering. But since the photo compelled me to call her Amethyste, a name I made up just for her, I felt it demanded to come out looking like a carved jewel. There's room for that because it has so little competition.

Not that I will do all covers in this fashion from now on- I'm incapable of doing that. But I think this will remind me, and perhaps other authors, that when it comes to ebook covers, simplicity is the best elegance.

A Design for an Upcoming Release

Just thought you'd like to see this. The book is not quite finished and I haven't really decided how I will publish it. I will actually probably submit it to a more traditional e-publisher since I have an invitation to submit a story that this one fits.

It's a novella length story told partially by letters, set in England, Portugal and Spain during the Peninsular War between Napoleon's French Empire and the British-Portuguese-Spanish Allies. It's a story that's roamed around my mind for years, but I've always been told it "would never sell".

Well, now what will sell depends on the readers, not the publishing industry, and I'm finding the readers want a much broader range of romances than legacy publishers can afford to give them. I understand that. If a story might sell well, but another one will likely sell extremely well, which one should a publisher, who is in business to make a profit, buy? And maybe they're right, maybe a story that's not entirely set in Regency England, especially one that takes the reader to the brink of the battlefield, won't have a good market.

but this story is too dear to my heart to leave un-published. I'll leave it to the readers to decide how valuable it is to them.

Hugs to all my wonderful readers, who share my tastes in love stories!

Delle

FAERIE will release July 20! (Updated to September-Sorry!)

Release delayed to September, 2011
for technical reasons

Blogger says it's having upload problems so I'm just dropping by right now to give you some updates. Oh hey, it worked! Never mind.

FAERIE will be releasing July 20. Yes, I know some of you have waited a long time for it, but that's one reason I decided I would bring it out myself. The wait for a regular pub date would be a year or more away. So now it's  going through a professional edit, and the cover is done. And I'm starting the process of finding reviewers and setting up promotions. No one can buy a book if they can't find it! You can  find out more about it in my "Books and WIPs" section.

And don't worry, historical romance lovers, I'm not abandoning my Regency Historicals. I'm finishing up two right now. One, I'll be submitting to a more traditional publisher, but I think I'll bring out the other myself. Why one and not the other? One is an invitation to  submit for a specific subject novella, and I just happened to have it already half written, so why not give it a shot? The other I think will suit my needs more if I produce it myself. I'll probably bring it out in the mid fall. (Another trip to Hawaii intervenes in September.)

So you're asking, is there really some kind of advantage in publishing my stories myself? Isn't that the horrible monster, Vanity Publishing? Well it could be, but you can be sure what I'm doing is a LOT OF HARD WORK, aimed at providing the best stories I can at a price the readers can easily afford, and that I've studied the situation carefully, and have about 18 months' very successful experience in independent publishing. In my traditionally published books you'll find a lot of excellent professional work, by wonderful editors and cover artists, along with technical people who know how to format a published book and have the means to distribute the books. But all that comes at a price, and sometimes readers have a hard time justifying buying a book that costs more than a few bucks.

But the thing is, I know how to do all of that, too. Yes, I do know better than to publish a book that only I have edited. Good grief, if you know me, you know my eyes are horrible anyway, and even the best sighted authors who viciously attack their books word by word will miss things. So yes, all my books will always go through at least one professional editor, not to mention eagle-eyed critique partners. I'll do a final edit on other authors' books, and it will be professional. But not my own. And of course, yes, I do my own covers.

So none of my indie-published books will ever be priced for more than $2.99. Most will be free, or 99 cents. And you get a book you'll love at a price that lets yo go buy another book too. And I, believe it or not, make a bit more money myself because so many more people can afford my books.

Hugs to all. And in the meantime, don't forget SIREN, a brand new story, not a re-tread, is now available. Only 99 cents. If you honestly can't afford it, email me. We'll work something out.

AND THE CONTEST WINNER IS...

1st, the $25 Amazon gift certificate: Samantha Fury. 

• Because: she sent that luscious photo of one of my favorite models, making it the most helpful suggestion. At first I thought it was the one I'd already tried unsuccessfully, but this photo is a little different. The one I already had is black & white, which would be hard to color, but also the head positioning in the older one is straight forward, which wouldn't work. But this one is perfect, with his head turned as if he is listening to the Siren's song.

2nd, the $10 Amazon gift certificate: Amber Autry-Munnerlyn.

I will give a $1 Amazon gift certificate OR a coupon for a free download of Siren (99 cent value) to each of the other entrants. But since I don't have email addresses for all of you, I'll be contacting you through Face Book to ask your choice. The Amazon certificate requires an email address, but the Smashwords coupon is something I can simply give to you directly for you to use.

SIREN is now up and available on Smashwords, where the first copy sold within an hour. It's also up on Amazon UK, where at least one copy has sold within minutes. You can see the page for it on Amazon US already but I don't know if it can be bought yet since my bookshelf page says it isn't available yet. All the same, it'll be available sometime this evening, and here's the link:

SIREN ON AMAZON

SIREN COVER CONTEST! PRIZES! Updated

(Note 2: I've added two new designs to the contest, based largely on what you've had to say so far. So if you've got time, take a look and see what you think of #4 and #5.)

(NOTE 1: If you have to comment anonymously, pls include your FaceBook name of some other way I can reach you- probably not good to show your email address on the comment.)

I'm about to release my first totally independent novella, SIREN. This 25,000 word novella. It's gone through an outside editor, and is ready to go. Except for one thing. It has THREE covers. So I'd like you to help me decide which one is the best one for the story.  THERE WILL BE PRIZES.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

SIREN is a 24,000 word novella, a sensual historical sea fantasy romance set in 1851, during the time of the great Clipper Ships. From the beginning, Siren is a mystery to the hero, John Wall, so main story is told entirely in his point of view, to emphasize his inability to know or understand the mysterious being of the sea.

For seventeen years, John Wall has sailed the seas, braving storms and pirates to bring his cargo safely into port.

Sometimes he sees the Siren and hears her clarion voice above the crashing waves:

"Come to me, John Wall. Come to me."

But the Siren's song is death, so John resists its lure--

Until the night he meets the King of Storms.

Masts shattered, sheets ripped and sails torn, his men-- gone--

John clings fiercely to the wreckage, defying death.

And the Siren comes for him.

"Come to me," her beautiful voice sings.

Their lips locked in a kiss, John Wall slips beneath the sea.

What has he found? Heaven? Hell?

Or something beyond his wildest imagination?

WHAT TO DO:
Read the blurb and look at the three proposed covers, on this post. And comment. If all you want to say is "Great cover!", that's fine with me. But the commenters who give some helpful, insightful suggestions  (I get to decide) will be given an extra FIVE chances toward winning the prizes. Yes, you can say you don't like something, and yes, you can point out flaws. Remember, my crazy eyes often don't see something that's perfectly obvious to other people, so I don't take offense to such things if they're not rudely presented.

You MUST be willing to give me your actual email address if you are a winner because all prizes must be sent by email.

PRIZES:
1st: $25 Gift Certificate to Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Sony, or other ebook retailer the winner chooses. This will be MY choice of the most helpful comment. no promises that I'll actually be able to use the best comment though.
2nd: $10 Gift Certificate to an ebook retailer of winner's choice, randomly drawn from all commenters. (Don't spam me with hundreds of "nice cover" type entries. I'll just delete all but one anyway.) Commenters with helpful suggestions or comments beyond "nice cover" remarks will be given five entries into the drawing.
3rd: Ten $1 Gift certificates to AMAZON ONLY. These will be randomly drawn in the above manner.
Bonus Prizes: Two Free copies of SIREN from Smashwords

Nobody gets more than one prize.

DEADLINE: You've got till NOON, Friday May 18, 2011, to enter. I have to cut it off then so I can get the book out. And I'll announce the winners on Friday night on this blog.

And look for SIREN's release on Amazon, Smashwords and other ebook retailers. I'll post precise links when I get them.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you have to say!

Oh, the Treachery!

Temporarily FREE on Kindle!

Okay, so it's not really treachery. Maybe more of a slippery slope. But since I once broke my wrist by slipping on a flat, nearly level rock AFTER climbing down a cliff, I'm a little bit hyper-vigilant about slippery slopes.

It seems two of my books, FIRE DANCE and THE MUDLARK, are caught in a price war between Sony and Amazon. Sony marked them down to $0.00 (which as near as I can tell is a contract violation), and Amazon consequently matched the price (which is NOT a contract violation).

Temporarily FREE on Kindle!

I have no idea how this might have changed my sales numbers on Sony- and in fact I can't get any communication from either them or Smashwords, my distributor. But I can tell you Amazon reports that I've had over 35,000 downloads of my FOUR directly published books in less than a week.

So I should be excited about two huge bookstores giving away my book without my permission? You bet. Here's why:

At first sales of the other two, non-free directly published books as well as the three published by other publishers, dropped drastically. But within less than a day, they rose. They had been dragging after a four month run at the Top Seller lists on Amazon, and needed a little infusion of something. My plan had been to direct-publish a novella- my historical sea fantasy romance, SIREN, but formatting problems, three back-to-back conferences in April and a huge increase in cover art requests have slowed me down for anything that doesn't have a firm deadline. So Free Reads is just the boost I need right now to go along with the next release.

That's most likely about 20,000 new readers in the US and about 4,000 in UK, at least glancing at my books on their Kindles. And from my experience, a fair number of readers will go buy another book by me, once they've read one. I particularly like seeing my UK sales go up, tossing both HIS MAJESTY, THE PRINCE OF TOADS and LOKI'S DAUGHTERS into the UK Top Sellers lists. Before, they'd gone all but undiscovered.

So what am I going to do about Sony? Nothing, probably. Will they pay me? I don't know. But in the meantime, I'm issuing an open invitation to all readers. GO GET 'EM!

KINDLE SALES UPDATES

I haven't posted in awhile- I can't believe how busy I've become since the New Year, both with ebook sales and ebook covers. But the whole ebook worlds seems to be spinning so fast it's hard to see what is going on. So I thought I should drop by my own blog and tell you what I see.

The sales growth has been phenomenal in three months for my books, and a lot of other authors are reporting the same thing. It's clear, though, that sales growth is uneven, and a lot of authors are struggling, trying to get a toe hold in the market. I get asked a lot how to do that, and I really can't tell you how to do it. What worked for me began with a fabulous piece of luck, yet I have to say it's probably the only major piece of luck not directly related to hard work I've had in all my years in publishing. The rest was really a matter of working myself and my books into the right position at the right time, but without knowing ahead of time what that position and time would be. In other words, plain old perseverance.

But I'm happy to report that HIS MAJESTY, THE PRINCE OF TOADS has remained at the top of the Regency Romances for a solid month, and has been on the Top Selling Romances list for 48 days. How many sales does this take? Around 200 a day. Totals? For four books, in December I sold 1208 books, but January jumped to just under 6,000. And February, almost reached 10,000. With my other published books on Amazon, sales weren't as good, but they also have been rising. So I'm certain I sold well over the 10,000 last month. This month? Looking good but not nearly that kind of increase. And every day I have to sell more than before to keep my ranking. So some days I sell more books yet still drop in ranking. Some days the other way around. So, since I've been ranking between 29 and 46 in all Romances, I figure there are at least 50 other romance authors who are having the same kind of experience, or even better. I wonder how many books they're selling????